With Support From CSPEN, The Urban Institute Will Unveil Key Financial Value Transparency & Gainful Employment Research During Conference Keynote Presentation
Overview
The Urban Institute is in the final stages of completion of the first of two reports which have been funded in whole or in part by a gift from CSPEN. The first of the two reports examines how earnings change in the later years (5 years) after students complete their credentials, with a major focus and analysis on earnings changes for fields where a high share of programs have low initial earnings and are likely to fail earnings-based accountability policies like the gainful employment rule.
On Wednesday afternoon October 30th, conference attendees will be the first to learn about the initial findings of the Urban Institute’s report and also be provided with an overview of the second report, funded by CSPEN, during a presentation by Jason D. Delisle (cspen.us21.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9fa45d85dc7e4647608069698&id=bc0ffea683&e=3aeadd9061) , Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute. This second report will focus even more on the assertions that many short-term career training programs are unlikely to pass the Biden administration’s gainful employment regulation – mainly the rule’s high school earning benchmark. The driving assumption behind the policy is that these credentials are not providing value for students. But the debate around this policy has included little information about the students attending these programs other than the median earnings statistic, nor has it considered alternative benchmarks that might better incorporate non-earning benefits students receive from their programs or their pre-enrollment situations, particularly earnings and job quality. The second report will explore those factors with the aim of informing potential reforms to earnings-based accountability policies like the gainful employment rule.
CSPEN was able to donate to the development of this research as the result of a targeted donation provided by a benefactor who entrusted us to use the funding to promote research that could be used in support of our students, institutions, and employers of our graduates.
Don’t miss the opportunity to learn what the data shows, how the summary and analysis can inform the ongoing policy debates, and how the Urban Institute and CSPEN plan to promote the reports once each is published.
More on The Urban Institute’s First Report
There has been much debate about the features of earnings-based quality assurance policies (i.e. gainful employment), such as which fields and institutions the policies should cover, but there has been relatively little discussion about when earnings should be measured once students leave school to most accurately assess the payoff from the credential. The availability of data covering later years after students leave school, and the growing interest among policymakers to use these data for accountability policies, raises an important question about policy design: When should earnings be measured after students complete a credential to best capture whether the program pays off? If earnings are measured too early, fields where earnings are low initially but grow rapidly later could fail earnings-based accountability policies even if they provide value for students and taxpayers.
There is little consensus on an optimal year to measure earnings among different proposals. The Biden administration’s gainful employment rule, for example, measures earnings three years after completion and six years after completion for a few select fields (the Obama-era version of the rule measured at the second year). A prominent proposal advanced by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2024 would measure short term credentials in students’ first year after completion, but later for other credentials. A Senate proposal from 2023 measures earnings as late as 5 or 6 years after students complete their credentials.
In this report, we examine how earnings change in the later years after students complete their credentials, and we explore the implications for earnings-based accountability policies and student loan repayment. We use new data from the College Scorecard showing students’ earnings up to 5 years after they complete a credential and assess which undergraduate and graduate fields show the most and least change during that time. We focus our analysis on earnings changes for fields where a high share of programs has low initial earnings and are likely to fail earnings-based accountability policies like the gainful employment rule.
What’s Next
Stay tuned for more announcements regarding additional Keynote presentations and a full list of all of the pre-conference workshops, entertaining networking events, the plethora of highly informative breakout sessions, and our 10th Annual Gala – The Black Tie In The Sky Ball!
